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Will Crowdfunding for Businesses Succeed or Fail?

A revolution in early stage finance is taking place.

Thanks to the JOBS Act, which opens access to capital through stock sales by non-public companies, a new market is being born that will revolutionize how we think about investing and how we grow jobs. It's called equity-crowdfunding. For the first time, middle-class Americans will be able to pull from their savings in order to invest in startups and small businesses.

If people shift just 1% of the $30 trillion they hold in savings to small businesses, it will amount to more than 10 times the venture capital invested in all of 2011. With numbers like that, the reach and impact of this emerging market could dwarf the size of today’s donation-based crowdfunding market.

That’s not a game-changer. That’s a revolution.

But will the JOBS Act live up to its name? Will equity-crowdfunding create the tidal wave of jobs this country needs? Will US businesses once again thrive, instead of merely survive?